


Pick 'n Mix At The Watanabe Candy Co.

by EagleOfTheNinth



Category: Chibi-Ex - Jenna Moran, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (RPG), Nobilis - Jenna Moran
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, Eating Disorders, F/M, Ficlet dump, Gen, I Really Don't Like Nobilis Heaven, Identity Porn, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalised Transphobia, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Other, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Identity, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Threesome - F/M/Other, Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships, baby enemies of reality who love each other very much, but the TROPES Natalia, child soldiers of the Bellum Magnum, gmd campaign, god tier roleswap, idk - Freeform, implied/referenced emotional neglect, is it identity porn if it's not romantic/sexual?, living your own superhero au, love between monsters, masks are a HIGHLY EFFECTIVE disguise, natalia koutolika carries on, or something pretty like it, plus internalised self-hate over being a weird monster, rinley yatskaya will never stop, sometimes you need to tell your liege lord to Go The Fuck To Sleep, well-meaning ableism, when the end of the world happens but it's not the end of the world you WANTED, yet more Chibi-Ex references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:29:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 9,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EagleOfTheNinth/pseuds/EagleOfTheNinth
Summary: Ficlets and drabbles for CMWGE, Nobilis, and Glitch, too short to be their own thing. Mostly unrelated. Multiple pairings and continuities. May be dark and/or smutty. Rating subject to change as more chapters are added.
Relationships: Jade Irinka/Headmaster of the Bleak Academy, Seizhi Schwan/Chuubo, Seizhi Schwan/Chuubo/Miramie Mesmer, Seizhi Schwan/Miramie Mesmer
Kudos: 5





	1. Miramie: "the hat I wear is fit to the occasion"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for rthstewart's three-sentence ficathon, for the prompt "the fancy hats are a vital part of the plan". Original can be found here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/156816.html?thread=6566032#cmt6566032

She doesn't want to go back to the Bleak Academy, she never wants to _see_ the place again, but Chuubo and Seizhi have got themselves captured by the Headmaster and Leonardo went to fetch them back and didn't return-which leaves _her_ to make sure the second rescue mission doesn't crash and burn too. She's the only one out of all of the remaining group who's been there before, let alone lived and studied there. She knows how bad it is. The others don't, and without that knowledge they won't be able to hold out.

Even if she didn't care for them, she couldn't allow them to be taken. They are too powerful, and too necessary.

There's something quixotic about being a Strategist. About fighting despite impossible odds. About knowing you are doomed, but not giving up.

Melanie Malakh died in despair, drowning in learned helplessness at the moment that should have been her greatest triumph, and never understood that.

Miramie Mesmer intends never to _forget_ it.

There's still a little over an hour to go before she's to meet with the others at the docks, before they steer the airship Jasper captured from the Moon Prince into the deepest Outside. She has completed most of her preparations already-closed up the cafe, said goodbyes to the other children of the Archives, left a note for Professor Hayashi.

Now she dresses for the occasion, before her mirror in the Hidden Room, in clothes that have been stored away here since her former self was destroyed. Finery in the old Excrucian style, not mourning black or ghostly grey but crushed velvet in the deep dark red of pigeon-blood rubies. Silver epaulettes at her shoulders, silver trim at her hems and moon-bright buckles on her boots.

For the finishing touch, she fixes the matching hat to her hair with pins of wrought silver and Hayashi-made glass. Then she blinks away the changeling's illusion on her eyes, leaving them full of void and falling stars.

Despite everything, she is still a Strategist. A deathwright. Learning to love parts of Creation does not reduce that; she is still royalty of the Not.

Let the Headmaster _know_ who it is that stands valiant against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from the luthe for the Ninuanni name element -elm, meaning hat, helm or mask (https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/190577978488/on-ninuanni-names-17)


	2. Seizhi/Chuubo: "and believe their fruit will sustain us forever"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sap with a touch of smut, inspired by this gorgeous art drawn by caramelchameleon: https://kaaramel.tumblr.com/post/190028839462/telluriciron-said-seizhi-in-c2-pumpkin-dress
> 
> This chapter involves sex between two underage but consenting people. If you're not okay with that, click the back button and don't blame _me_.

You could lay the comic out on the table, it would be easier for you both to read it that way, but this is nicer.

His breath tickles your cheek, your neck, warm and delicate; every so often he presses little kisses to your skin, lips and the barest hint of tongue. Fluttery and light like feathers and froth. You hum deep in your throat at each one, tilt your head to give him a better angle. He’s not leaving marks, not like you like to leave on him, like you know he’s wearing right now beneath his clothes, the dark heavy blossoms you bite into his neck and collarbones and the inside of his thighs. Still it feels as if he is marking you, despite the gentleness, his mouth a brush applying flakes of gold leaf. Flickering serpent tongue, tasting you, scenting you. You like it.

You like his arm around you, the warm weight of him that leans into your warmth, drinks it up hungrily. You like his hand on your breast, cupping it. His thumb traces lazy circles there, faint through the layers of fabric that separate you, and at another time that might make you wild and unsatisfied, wanting to feel skin against skin. Right now it feels like something that could go on forever, building towards no real peak and so never ending. It doesn’t distract from your enjoyment of art or plot; it adds to them, the way summer sunlight on your skin adds to the enjoyment of an ice cream’s chilly sweetness.

You do want more. You _always_ want more. It’s just your nature to; you were always hungry for him, and always will be. But the _more_ you want, right now, isn’t the more of intensity but of duration. You want this to go on forever, this lovely honey-slow time of touching and being touched and bliss that requires nothing from you, only that you exist. Of existence being easy, blessedly easy, no need to fight or strive or work at it.

(It won’t last, of course-intellectually you know this-but it feels like it could, in this moment.

…and it’s not so bad that it won’t. You know that too. Because if this wasn’t temporary, you’d never know the joy of the needy heat that makes you hard and wet when it blooms between your legs like a flower. You’d never know what it is to feel the extravagance of that clever lovely tongue in your most intimate places, to come so hard you see stars and to watch _him_ fall apart under your hands. And you do like that too.

But right now you’re content to stay right where you are, in humble decadence; to read about superheroic antics, and savour the soft touches, and talk with him about love without either of you saying a word.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from this poem: https://wantshapesthem.tumblr.com/post/189519298197/the-end-of-art-and-i-will-devour


	3. Jade Irinka/the Headmaster, Jasper: "heaven invades/test and tempering"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another from the 3-sentence ficathon, prompt "hand in unlovable hand": original found here https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/156816.html?thread=6862992#cmt6862992

They love each other, but they don't like each other.

They love each other, but they want to fix each other.

Maybe that's not love at all. They probably couldn't do the other kind, the accepting kind. The learning to appreciate what isn't _you_ kind.

So the Headmaster shoots the sun from the sky, and Celestia shatters; so Jade retaliates by shedding screaming Creation-light instead of blood, and Ninuan drowns.

(He doesn't care about collateral damage. She regrets it in passing, idly, but concludes that it is worth it.)

They both try to win over their daughter, to convince her to forsake her other parent and the other half of her nature. Each of them is convinced it is for her own good.

Jasper listens to both of them. And then she chooses a third way.


	4. GMD PCs: "whatever works"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "reasons I'm still alive": https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/157880.html?thread=7845560#cmt7845560
> 
> Warning for suicidal thoughts.

_ A sampling of anonymous entries in the Book of Reasons, kept in the Hayashi Archive: _

~~My birds would have nobody to take care of them~~ None of the rest of you would be able to cope without my genius.

I fought so hard to get to be a person, to get to _be_. I think about it a lot, but...ultimately, I don't want to _stop_ being.

I do enjoy life. Mostly. But sometimes hope alone doesn't cut it. During those times, I stick around for spite's sake. There are people who I don't like, who are REALLY annoyed by my continued existence.

Suicide is a coward's way out. I am no coward. I _refuse_ to be a coward.

I keep inventing reasons. They never convince me for very long but I can always invent more. Hopefully one day one of them will stick in my head for good.

Someone who came before me killed herself. I don't want to end up like her.

There is still work to do, and people who depend on me. Perhaps they deserve better help than I can provide, but I am all too often all that is available.

Because I'm scared. I'm scared that it'll just be dark, that there won't be an afterlife. And I'm even more scared that there _will_ be.

_The Book of Reasons is part of the Archive of Hope project, and is open for any members of the public to write in. Feel free to add your own story of survival if so inclined._


	5. Seizhi, Melancholy Schwan: "the colour of unexamined ideas"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "unusual roses" https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/157880.html?thread=7961784&posted=1#cmt8060600

Seizhi's mother, besides being strange, and drifty, and kind of morbid, is an accomplished gardener. Sometimes they think that she pays more attention to her plants than to her children. (It's not a seriously bitter thought. Except for how it is.)  
  
For their own part, they can't really rank plants above people or animals, things that they can hear the wishes of, so they've little interest in learning how to keep a garden. At least, one in their mother's style, all art and artifice. The kitchen-gardens some of their friends in Fortitude keep, now-those are good, those you can use to _feed_ someone. And the garden of Chuubo's house is best of all to them, though their mother would barely accord it the name; it's a wildlife garden, untended and untamed, a home for foxes and hedgehogs and butterflies. The birdbath's always kept full and clean, and the grass has never been cut since before either of them was born.  
  
They do love their mother's garden too, though. Partly because it's familiar. Partly because it _is_ beautiful, even if the beauty is in some ways a selfish thing. There are lilies, pure white and heavy-scented; tall spikes of hollyhocks in deep purple and pink and red; hozuki with its long stems of flaming paper-lantern fruit; and there are roses. There are so many roses, of what seems like every possible colour and type, each with its own odd name-Cocktail, Ispahan, Schneewittchen, Rosa Mundi.  
  
Except, no. That's not _quite_ accurate.  
  
There is one rose that doesn't have a name. At least, they've asked their mother, and she said it didn't have one, which...she _likes_ it when people show interest in her hobby, so they're pretty sure she wouldn't lie. It's an odd-looking thing, vague and undefined in colour, but with a soft firefly glow inside each bloom. Not that it blooms very often, because the other strange thing about the nameless rose is that most of the time it's half dead, surviving only through Melancholy Schwan's somewhat obsessive care and devotion...until for some mad vegetable reason it decides to thrive for a while after all, and promptly goes completely overboard and tries to take over the entire garden. The last time it did that it strangled three other rosebushes and was starting on the garden shed before their mother pruned it back ruthlessly (and possibly, Seizhi suspects, used some kind of dark sorcery on it).  
  
Every so often they wonder why she doesn't just give up on it and plant something else. It's clearly more trouble than it's worth. But, then again, they aren't a gardener. It's probably one of those things you can't actually _get_ without the proper context and the right sort of mind.

* * *

When Ninuan falls to the Outside, Melancholy Eitsfulg is one of the luckier _annuja_. She does not degrade to wraithhood; she does not lose her memories; she does not get captured by Creation's Powers, who are flailing and confused even more than her own side of the Bellum Magnum are, and who are ready to pin blame for the Ash's death on anything and anyone that stays still long enough. She escapes, alone, with a handful of seeds in her pocket.  
  
In time, she reforms her Sanctuary. In time, she meets a mortal man who offers kindness without needing incentive. In time, she sets aside the War. In time, she begins to seek coexistence instead of sheer destruction.  
  
In time, she plants the seeds in empty yoghurt pots and with miracles and stubbornness and a shelf full of books on gardening she coaxes them to sprout. Despite her efforts, most fail to thrive. She is new to this, and the seeds are of a finicky species.  
  
And yet, even so, one seedling survives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "[Mortimer Schwan might be] a retired “Stray Cat”—he used to belong to one of the two-person exorcist teams put together in Arcadia (the Shopping District) to deal with dangerous youkai and other threats. That’s probably where he met Melancholy—she was his partner, or one of his targets!" -Fortitude: The Glass Maker's Dragon
> 
> "Melancholy Eitsfulg is dying of spirits and the otherworld. Ghosts harass her. Eventually she is dragged into the ghost world beneath the human world and therein lost. The whole process is quite unpleasant." -Glitch (pre-release version)
> 
> "I've determined the colour of widow-rose petals to be that of unexamined ideas." -Nobilis: Antithesis, minibook 1i 'A Diary of Deceivers'
> 
> Stems of hozuki, also known as Chinese or Japanese lantern, are a traditional part of the decorations for Obon, the Spirit Honouring Festival.


	6. Seizhi/Chuubo: "it's a problem"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written with this poem as a prompt:  
>  _  
> My pretty enemy,  
>  you tried to kill me  
> by arriving so late today.  
> But now I'm oozing joy,  
> hugging you with clothes still on.  
> Your whole body is seduction piled high.  
> One hug and my sorrow evaporates.  
> One squeeze and my frustration ebbs.  
> I know we can't share pillow and bed,  
> but pressing against you is sweet._
> 
> Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/157880.html?thread=8065208#cmt8065208
> 
> Contains implied underage sex and Chuubo being a horny teenage disaster.

Pros of hugging Seizhi in public: warm and soft. Familiar smell-spice-sweetness and clean human and faint ozone-prickle of the Engine's unworldliness and the scents of their home-heavy perfume of lilies, slight tang of formaldehyde. Arms around Chuubo, strong and clinging, hugging him _back_. It all adds up to love, to belonging and being wanted. He can't say no to that? He can't not be ready for it, whenever and whereever.  
  
Cons of hugging Seizhi in public: he can't _right this minute_ touch them everywhere he wants, can't peel off clothes to feel their bare skin against his. Sometimes he can't even kiss them, which is _completely unfair_. He counts to ten and pushes down the daydreams that want to flower half-real into the world, tries to slow the beating of his heart and really _really_ tries not to get a boner.  
  
This is...not always successful. There have been incidents. These incidents were embarrassing, for _everyone_ concerned.  
  
But he's sixteen and dating someone who's not just his best friend but also the hottest and most perfect person in the _world_ , so, like, give him a break.  
  
("At some point," declares Leonardo, after one such Incident, "the novelty of this dalliance has _got_ to fade, and we will all get some peace and quiet."  
  
Rinley, who can hear _exactly_ how strong the desire in Chuubo's heart is, replies dryly "Don't bet on it.")


	7. Rinley/Rafael Bannik: "somersaults and lanterns (aren't the order of the day)"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "mistaken about what sort of genre they're in"
> 
> Original: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/157880.html?thread=8039096#cmt8039096

Rinley leaps feet first into adventure, ready for a grand romp. They wisecrack and throw out puns, stick out their tongue at Simon Brambles and dance away from the jaws of the wolf with a laugh and a rude hand gesture. They know this is _their_ story, so how can it be anything other than a paen to a light-as-air wishing heart...?  
  
(They find out how, when Rafael dies; this is a story about the wishing heart not being enough. This is a story about endings.  
  
Totem huddles in their arms, whimpering, as the straw-haired kid disintegrates, and when Simon rests his hand on their shoulder they can't even find the strength to pull away.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from this song by S.J. Tucker, which itself is a fansong for Catherynne M. Valente's novel 'The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making': https://skinnywhitechick.bandcamp.com/track/wonders


	8. Natalia, Seizhi, Rinley, Miramie: "honours of Fortitude"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one will make far more sense if you have read the sourcebook "Fortitude: By The Docks Of Big Lake", as it relies on information contained therein.

Natalia’s the first of their group to gain an honour, predictably enough-always first to achieve anything, ace and prodigy-and just as predictably, it’s the red braid of a fighter, awarded her by the Rats in recognition of how she’s joined the fight against the Mysteries. It isn’t the defeat of Typhon that wins her it, though-Typhon was _personal_ , and nobody would have faulted her for leaving the Roofs to themselves thereafter. It’s that even after the golden snake is dealt with, she stays committed, chooses to engage with a conflict that she doesn’t _have_ to.

She plaits red ribbon into her hair, and pins it up in tight coils. Those who wear the red show it off, proud-but they don’t let it dangle, as a rule, they wouldn’t wear it as a necklace that could strangle them or an earring that could be torn from their flesh. It’s a basic rule that anyone serious enough about combat to earn this honour knows; you don’t give your enemy an easy way to take hold of you.

Seizhi tries to hide their weirder powers these days-it’s not _normal_ and surely you need to be at least a _bit_ normal to be Real-but they gain a reputation anyway, because they aren’t as good as they’d like at concealing their oddness. Especially when animals are concerned. It matters too much that even though birds and beasts are not _people_ , they have wishes of their own still, and yet no way to give them voice. So Seizhi listens to the street animals, to the gulls and the pigeons, to the wild and the feral and even to the tame and owned; they help them find food and shelter when necessary, wheedle cagey creatures into allowing themselves to be taken to the vet when injured and stand the cost out of their own money, smuggle excess cats into Horizon where the quota doesn’t hold, stay out till gone midnight looking for lost pets, and snarl fury and threat at anyone lazy or callous enough to harm a creature that can’t speak of it or fight back.

(Such things do happen, sometimes, even in Fortitude. The properties of the region incline people to be decent, but it is _only_ an inclination, only a general thing. If petty cruelty did not exist there, there would be far fewer stories.)

They are uncertain and alarmed when offered the blue of a defender of the natural world-do they have a right to Fortitude’s honours when the region isn’t actually their _home_?-but Dr Kiyomizu and the Blue Ratboy have received enough help from them that they insist Seizhi deserves it, Horizon-child or not, and over time they wear them down until they allow a knotted and tasselled blue silk cord to be tied in a bow around the strap of their overalls. It doesn’t show up so well at first glance, blue on blue, but you’ll see it if you take a second look.

Rinley doesn’t wear any colours-well, no, of course they wear _colours_ , you wouldn’t catch them dead in monochrome, but none of those colours _mean_ anything beyond that Rinley happens to like them. That doesn’t mean they don’t have an honour granted them, though...and _what_ an honour. It is _not_ something they would have chosen for themself.

The thing is, Rinley’s a giver. They’re a listener. They’re a troublemaker, but they’re a peacemaker too; it’s not just that they can read hearts if they so choose, they’ve honed that talent and put time and effort into working as a mediator. They aren’t afraid of anything-or any _one_ -different or alarming. They pretty much always have a bit of spare cash for anyone who needs it, and though they get it by fairytale methods it isn’t vanishing fairy gold. Rinley will do favours, again, for anyone who needs it-they’ll fix your stuff, or take you where you need to go, or tell a story that sounds goofy but will almost always contain some important message. And even if none of those things are helpful, they will still give you _time-_ a few minutes or an hour or an afternoon of friendly presence and a willing ear.

In short? They’ve made a name for themself-without even meaning to!-as a _dependable person_. It’s terrible. (...except not really. Because being able to help people is good and right and deeply satisfying. But when you thought you were modelling yourself on Fortitude’s most legendary trickster and shit-stirrer, it’s just so _embarrassing._ )

There are...rumours, about Miramie. Nothing anyone can _prove_ , yet. No solid evidence. But there are rumours. She is better than Seizhi at hiding what makes her uncanny, but not perfect. Not to mention, she lives at the Archives, and everyone knows (though nobody would be so gauche as to say it out loud) that Hayashi’s Archive, beside preserving minutiae of the region’s past, takes in those children and teens who _are not wanted_ anywhere else.

(As I said before; such things do happen. Even in Fortitude, it is possible to slip through the safety net. It is possible for kindness and goodwill to fail, in the face of something that may not be evil but cannot _fit in_.)

So every so often, she will go to open up her café and find white paint daubed on the door. White for witches, for evil magic, for monsters to be cast out.

(Even in Fortitude, there is hate.)

Mostly it’s just angry stripes and splotches, stark against dark wood. Sometimes it’s more elaborate-foul words, or crude demon-faces. Miramie always reacts the same way; she thins her lips and squares her shoulders and banishes the paint with her World-Breaker’s Hand, a Bleak power used honourably against a worldly thing made vile. She opens up café and art shop for business, and she says nothing of it save to those whom she knows she can trust. A quiet, bitter, _strategic_ defiance.

But proud, too. Because the witch’s white is not the whole story.

There are those in Fortitude who go against the region’s properties. And then there are those that transcend them. Or perhaps follow them most truly of all. The Archive is recognised as a good place, you know. That’s because of people like that.

I think it was one of Miramie’s friends who started it, though I’m not sure which one. They aren’t telling. I don’t think it’s _just_ them, though, anymore. Like I said, there are people in Fortitude who _respect_ spaces where it’s not possible to be too peculiar or too frightening to be accepted.

So; sometimes, more often I think than the vandalism, Miramie arrives to find the front of the café decorated with paper-chains or ribbons or tassels or tinsel in bright, shining gold.

She never leaves these up, of course; she’s properly modest, as indeed is any keeper of a true good place. They don’t boast. She rolls her eyes and removes the gaudy signs of approval at once.

But she smiles as she does it, and instead of using her Hand, she takes them down carefully to be folded away. I think she uses scraps of them when making her masks, sometimes.

And-I’m not _sure_ of this, you understand, but-

-you know how if you go to Hayashi’s Archive, go up the stairs until it gets weird and Outside-y and then turn left, you’ll reach the Dream-Witch’s hidden room?

I heard that there’s a little chest there, tucked away in a corner, and if you opened it you’d find the tinsel and tassels, the ribbons and paper-chains, slightly foxed in some cases but still the colour of the sun.


	9. Iolithae/Tairté: "a snapshot from the silver age"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the 2021 installment of the 3-sentence ficathon. Prompt: "bloody fluff". Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=8779312#cmt8779312

They're fresh from breakthrough and both so _young_ —fourteen for a human and four hundred for a Serpent work out much the same in practice, so now they've shed those false-Creation-seemings and discovered themselves as enemies of the world, they are starting from the same point of development and can choose to grow up together. Their bodies are coltish and lithe and awkward, and the star-fields of their eyes are rich with nebulae.  
  
Tairté hasn't got the hang of working Deceiver p-State miracles yet, Imperial habit getting in the way and fouling his technique; Iolithae is equally unsure how to _not_ make any statement she utters into a miraculous Lie, and has to phrase everything as a question or command in order to avoid using her powers when she doesn't want to. Tairté is well-educated but sheltered, unused to being in strange territory with no adults to support him. Iolithae's old life taught her nothing about the Mythic World or the gods of void and creation, save a few misunderstood scraps that got incorporated into faith or folktales, but she understands very well the nature of cruelty and the use of cunning. He likes structured arguments. She likes stories. It is easy and natural how they balance each other out. They work well together, they learn together, and they become better and better at destabilising the gods-given order and function of the world.  
  
The uneasy cold war between Is and Is-Not is threatening to explode into overt conflict, but they're too young to be anything other than optimistic about that. Like all their Riding, they are believers, and none of the shine has yet worn off of the experience of seeing the True Thing Beyond Creation. Iolithae is sure that if it comes to open war, the Excrucian Host will win. Tairté not only agrees with this but thinks that war needn't even be necessary; all that's needed is for the Host to be able to _explain themselves_ , and eventually all Creation's forces will understand their mistake and defect. How can a reality that is a lie ever stand against the transcendent Truth of Unbeing?  
  
It's all going to be _okay_. The world is going to end, and the Void will take all souls and make truth of them, and everything will be okay. They won't know pain or suffering, then, only rightness and love.  
  
Iolithae blinks at Tairté, surprised, when he voices this exact opinion one night; the two of them on the shore of a lake in the lands of the Fëdorovo, a lake that was once shallow and tame but which they have woken into a great watery wound stretching down to forbidden deeps, a lurking-place and gateway for the creatures of chaos. And seals, because Iolithae likes seals. They're so round and fat and funny-looking and so very sharp-toothed, and you have to admire _any_ species that chose to go back to the water. "Do you think love is part of the True Thing?" she asks him, genuinely curious.  
  
Tairté, in the grass with the flowers they'd used for the rite strewn around him, shrugs as best one can when lying on one's back. There's a spare milkmay bloom in his top buttonhole, a periwinkle tucked behind one ear. "Of course it is," he says, and smiles up at her. "How could it be otherwise? When what's true about _me_ is the part of me that loves you."


	10. Chuubo: "starving snakes devour own hearts"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3-sentence ficathon, prompt being "I'm not hungry". Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=8685872#cmt8685872
> 
> Warning for eating disorder, unhelpful and ableist 'help' pushed on the person with said disorder, references to PTSD and (nonsexual) child abuse, guilt complexes, and suicidal ideation.
> 
> Title is from that of this article: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/08/22/2011956.htm

Long ago his people taught him 'take only what you have earned', and that always included _food_. Nourishment was a privilege, never a right. The fact that they're all gone now doesn't mean he can stop believing that; if anything, it's the opposite. After all, it's his _fault_ they're dead.  
  
So when he can force himself to eat, now, it's when he can convince himself that the calculus works out in his favour; that he's done something _good_ enough to allow him a few morsels, even weighed against his huge culpability.  
  
When Leo or the Lady Jade offer him food, he deflects by claiming that he isn't hungry. It's very nearly true. His belly is almost always empty, but he's not sure anymore how to _feel_ that, let alone recognise it as imperative.  
  
(It doesn't fool them. Leo and the Lady aren't _stupid_. They can _see_ how thin he's gotten. He knows they know. He knows they're worried.  
  
But they're not Serpents; they don't _understand_. So they express their worry by shouting and snapping and lecturing, by heaping on guilt-trips, telling him he's doing _wrong_ by starving himself, being irresponsible, _hurting them_. And that doesn't help at _all._ It just makes it even harder to choke anything down.)  
  
Eventually, nauseous with shame and steeped in misery, seeing no other way out, he puts an end to himself the only way he can think of that won't take the world with him. He curls in on himself and **_forgets_** , dreams himself small and mortal, guiltless, ordinary. A human child, who might—admittedly—be in possession of a Marvellous Wish-Granting Engine, but nevertheless could not _possibly_ be a god who by the foolish desires of a child destroyed his people, his parent, and their world.  
  
...It's a funny thing about the Engine, though. It'll do all manner of impossible things easily, but there's one very simple kind of wish that never comes out right.  
  
Wish for _food_ and the Engine digs in its heels.  
  
 _"You can't have an ice cream_ and _eat it, right?_  
  
 _"Everyone knows that."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A Philosophy of the Serpents of the Tree: Take Only What You Have Earned.
> 
> Theft means nothing to the Aaron’s Serpents, and “property” only a little more. They can define these concepts, but they cannot easily grasp them, since they are raised in a world that has given them everything. What this injunction defines is duty: that one must work and sacrifice in proportion to what one desires. This is no easy principle to hold. Aaron’s Serpents, crippled in the war, have been known to starve themselves, or even die, because they could no longer earn the rich-flowing sap that flows in and on the World Ash their parent." -from Nobilis: The Game Of Sovereign Powers, 2nd edition.


	11. Seizhi/Miramie: "you don't need to hide, my friend, for I'm just like you"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3-sentence ficathon yet again! Prompt was "let us be the same wound if we must bleed." Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=8692272#cmt8692272
> 
> Title from 'Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites", by Skrillex.

Eventually you have to admit that a life free of pain is not going to be an option for you. That there is no destiny to give you a place in the world. That nothing can fix you and make you new. That you're not real, and not meant to be here, and that's going to be agony forever and _you just have to deal with it_.  
  
You very nearly die of that realisation. If the world is never going to want you, if you'll never be more than an unwelcome intruder, then why inflict yourself on it? Why not do the right thing and cut yourself out like the tumour you are?  
  
And if you were alone, if it was _only_ you that was like this, you would. But by some strange and backwards miracle, you're not.  
  
She's not the same kind of monster as you, but she's still a monster. Creation's fabric hates and hurts her even _more_ than it does you. And she is beautiful, and fierce, and kind, and so _good_ that you can't believe she deserves any part of the pain. And even that's not all—  
  
—because it's not just that she understands you, as if that weren't gift enough. It's that she loves you.  
  
(And she _loves_ the same way you love, too. Like _hungry_ , like _don't-let-go_ , like _prized-jewel_ , like _mine-all-mine-forever._  
  
"You are my treasure, _my-vizier_ ," she tells you, clever artist's hands tracing your face and stroking your hair, voice warm with affection. "There's no better evidence for the world being wrong than that it doesn't love you.")  
  
And no, it doesn't take away the pain, any more than you can love away the curse that claws at her.  
  
But it makes it all so much more bearable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suezia: Seizhi's Ninuanni name, lit. 'my vizier', according to this post from Jenna Moran's tumblr: https://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/188737977783/on-excrucian-names-5


	12. Laodemus (and Entropy II and Lilimund): "until I put on the mask (of my own face)"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3-sentence ficathon, prompt of "superhero au". Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=8660784&posted=1#cmt9050160
> 
> Warning for implied abuse and neglect.

The superhero scene in Town is kind of like an hidden world in itself, one that lightly overlays the real one.  
  
Most people with powers are just themselves. They're magicians, or warriors, or deviant scientists, but they're _open_ about it. Or else they go the other way and hide truly, keeping their strangeness and strength under wraps.  
  
If you're a _superhero_ , you don't do either of those things. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that you do _both_. You take a new name; you wear a mask. (Perhaps a costume too, though that's not really necessary. Masks, after all, are a very effective disguise.) You don't let anyone see the everyday truth of you, the awkwardnesses, the flaws. You grandstand. You do great things. (Or terrible ones. Some prefer the mask of the villain to that of the hero.)  
  
In the mask you're someone else, living your own Golden Age, in a world with simpler rules. In the mask you're brave and strong and while an enemy may physically beat you up, nobody can really _touch_ you. Not where it hurts.  
  
That's why Laodemus likes it. The world doesn't need to know about his insecurities. He looks the part of a big, dramatic, cheerful strongman, so that's what he'll be, _El Técnico_ in flamboyant red and blue and gold, someone _better_ than ~~the guy who's been trying since forever to get his parents to just _look at him_ —~~  
  
—see? That's just kind of pathetic and sad. Nobody wants to know about that. Least of all Laodemus himself. He can choose who he wants to be, and he chooses to be someone who doesn't have those kinds of feelings.  
  
It all gets a bit shaky, though, after he meets—and subsequently teams up with—the Angel of Fortitude and the Clockwork Guardian.  
  
They're really something, those two. He wouldn't work with them if they weren't. It's not just their powers; the Angel's geomancy and army of monsters and mutation-inducing ichor, the Guardian's venomous spit and summoned barriers and mechanical genius. It's how _well_ they use them—how clever they are about it, and how much they _want_ to be of help. It's the way they'll never back down from a challenge and never let a problem go unfixed if they can solve it. They're just _good kids_ , both of them. He cares about them a lot. But.  
  
There's an etiquette to superheroics, to teamups and rivalries both. You never take off your mask, literally or figuratively, and you never try to look behind anyone else's. To Laodemus that's a comfort. But the Angel and the Guardian aren't nearly so good at keeping kayfabe. For them, the secrecy chafes.  
  
They try, of course. (Like he said, they're good kids.) They really try. But then they'll let something slip. Blurt out some too-raw feeling. Drop a detail in conversation without noticing how alarming it sounds. And each of them _worries_ when the other does that.  
  
The Guardian explains, fidgeting, that she "really should not be outside my...my home, at all—I'm not _allowed_ , it wouldn't be proper", and the Angel can't hide his horror and confusion, hands twitching like he wants to reach out to her, like he would be doing so were it not for how his palms leak corruptive blood.  
  
The Angel casually mentions that he never had friends as a child—"nobody ever wanted to try, they knew my dad would hurt them for it"—and the Guardian's clenching her fists, visibly biting back such protective _fury_ that Laodemus has no doubt; if she ever meets the Angel's father, she'll strike the bastard down where he stands.  
  
So of course Laodemus worries too, so much, and the conventions get a little bit harder to keep to every day. He wants to find the 'home' that the Guardian's being kept prisoner in and _break_ it. He wants to know who the 'associates of my father' are that the Angel has implied are trying to harm him.  
  
But those things can't happen without masks coming off, and when masks come off everything falls apart. They'd lose this, the freedom they both cling to so hard, the safety of anonymity. He'd lose both of them.  
  
So he doesn't pry, and he keeps kayfabe, and he supports them as best he can. And he wonders when it will become too much. He wonders which of them will crack first.  
  
~~And sometimes. Sometimes he wonders—  
  
—if, _when_ they unmask.  
  
What if _he_ did, too?~~


	13. Temajia, Coriander: "sometimes being turned into a Mimic is actually kind of neat"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3-sentence ficathon again, prompt of "don't worry, you're with us now" which I reposted myself from the last year's ficathon to fill.
> 
> Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=9066800#cmt9066800
> 
> This will make sense if you have read Chibi-Ex, so go do that!

The young man with the rifle has starry-dark eyes and hair far redder than Temajia's pelt. "Death's let you go," he tells her, and all at once everything makes beautiful and perfect sense; she's not the Teumessian fox anymore, because she's Not, and that means she's _free_.  
  
And being an enemy of the world who gets to _fight_ it sounds a lot more fun than endlessly fleeing, unable to stop or to be caught.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~I can't believe I did a 3-sentence-ficathon fill that's actually three sentences adsdgdhdh~~


	14. Seizhi/Chuubo, "by universal law"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet More 3-Sentence Ficathon. Prompt: 'soulmates by choice'.
> 
> Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=8783664#cmt8783664

The wish for a best friend _failed_. Let's be quite clear about that. The rules of miracles are clear, set down since the Golden Age began; push too far into impossibility, and instead of what you wanted (what is simply _against all law_ for you to have) you'll get a hole in the world, and through that hole shall crawl monsters. Lilimund in her kindness softened the curse, gentled the beast's panic as best she could and woke up the seed of striving mind to true sapience—but that's just _damage control_.  
  
Except...Chuubo looked at the hideous half-formed thing, badly concealed beneath a thin veneer of humanity, saw it in all its hunger and misery, and said _Oh, you're perfect. I know you. You're like me; you're mine._  
  
And the monster looked back at _him_ , at the starveling last child of the Ash, at the kid so pathetic and broken that reality itself'd declared it was unforgivable hubris for him to imagine anyone might truly know him and yet still want him around, and replied _You're me, you're mine. You're like me. I **know** you! I love you! Please keep me forever, so that I can keep **you**!_  
  
And arms reached out, and bodies curled close against each other, and hearts sang so loud that the song warped universal law around it; _mine-to-me! All lovely, all holy, all **mine**!_  
  
So, yes; the wish failed, and failed in the worst possible way.  
  
But with all the wrongness flowered into joy, you'll never convince either of them of that.


	15. Rinley, Iolithae: "walk away from Omelas and come back with lockpicks and axes"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet more 3-sentence ficathon. Prompt: 'brushing/braiding/putting up someone else's hair', original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=9071664#cmt9071664
> 
> Warnings for, well, the 'Rinley and the Titovs' arc.
> 
> Title comes from a Patreon post about hopepunk by Ruthanna Emrys.

Actually, Rinley's not sure why they're surprised.  
  
It's the _Titovs_ , after all. Everyone _knows_ they're suss. There is literally no bad thing you can think of, up to and including 'eating human babies with a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti', that you could attribute to the Titov family WITHOUT pretty much all of Fortitude nodding and going "yep, that sounds like them". It's their _brand_!  
  
So 'the monster in their basement turning out to be a kid that they're abusing' is, in retrospect, _really_ something that Rinley should've seen coming.  
  
That doesn't mean they're prepared to _tolerate_ it, though.  
  
(And maybe she _is_ a sacred horror, but—so what? If this cruelty is what it takes to keep Town safe from the monster, then Town _doesn't deserve to be safe_. If complicity in this is what it means to be a shrine person, then every last shrine should be burnt to the ground.  
  
People might accuse them of abandoning the duty of the Yatskaya, if they knew they thought that way, but Rinley will never betray Fortitude. It's just that that means that they won't let it betray _itself_ either.  
  
 _'You have a home in Fortitude.'_ Torture chambers don't fucking count as _homes_.)  
  
Rinley Yatskaya breathes out slow, and works a comb _gentle, gentle_ through the filthy, tangled mess that is Iolithae Septimian's hair, and begins to _plan._


	16. Genseric: "a very imprecise apocalypse"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet more 3-sentence ficathon. Prompt was 'the end of the world was overrated', original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=8720944#cmt8720944
> 
> Title was _meant_ to be a quote from 'Looking for Jake' by China Mieville, but I remembered it wrong. This is probably a sign of the Outside's insidious corrosion! :p

When the sun goes out over Suzhou, Genseric has a split second in which to feel triumphant—to think _Well done, whoever struck that blow!_ —but it's _only_ a split second before bright blood begins to fall like rain. Whereever it touches, it decoheres the world, blurring it like a watercolour painting—not erasing it, no, he'd welcome _that_ , but reducing it to a mad dreamlike jumble that's neither Creation nor Void, that's as disorienting and frightening to _him_ as it is to the humans crowding the streets.  
  
How is this possible? What's _happening?_ Imperators have fallen to the Host before, and it's never caused anything like _this_. He tries to theorise, but the droplets are landing on his hair and clothes, getting in his _eyes_ , and it's becoming harder and harder to think clearly. An alien and howling terror is welling up in him, mated to his own confusion and fear; somewhere, something hurts.  
  
For the first time in his Not-life, Genseric Dace drops book and quill and dignity all mid-sentence and _runs_ like the massed armies of Heaven and Hell are on his tail. Jenna's apartment is not far from here; she will be there, and it's likely Coriander and Ritho will too. Perhaps, if he is _very_ lucky, he can reach it before he forgets who any of them (including _himself_ ) are.


	17. GMD PCs: "rules disproved and debts removed"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 3-sentence ficathon never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends...
> 
> Prompt was "even if that's the way they are, that doesn't mean that's the way they have to be", original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=8812848#cmt8812848

Serpents of the Tree are too big and careless to be safe company; they mean well, yes, but they'll crush smaller beings just by accident.

_(Chuubo holds a friend's hand in both of his with infinite gentleness, like it's as priceless as the cintamani and as delicate as fine glass.)_

Actuals are doomed to endless, mindless hunger, to absence of all identity, to pitiful servitude beneath the skin of the world.

_(Seizhi blazes bright and fierce and singular, a knight-defender, and their reward is arms opened to them and a reality that is their home and their Heaven.)_

Fallen angels are so _very_ broken; they love all things, but they don't know how to love anything without torturing it.

_(Leonardo fine-tunes the Mechanism of Original Sin, and when he goes to the side of those in need, he chooses to heal their hurts instead of making them worse.)_

Zu refuse to get involved with conflict. They cloister themselves away on mountaintops, and seek a peace they won't share.

_(Natalia's knuckles are almost always bloodied, for she never saw a conflict she didn't declare her stake in; time after time she charges in, ready to take on any bully from Typhon to Death Himself.)_

Darklords are the princes of suicide, of a wild freedom that leads to an early grave. They encourage people to burn like shooting stars, brilliant but all-too-brief. They don't know any better; real empathy is beyond them.

_(Rinley stays up all night spinning stories, listening to a faltering wishing-heart, slowly talking its owner back from their mind's cliff-edge.)_

True Gods are so far beyond any kind of relationship that any human could recognise. They are too elemental, too huge. They writhe together in knots, fucking and devouring according to incomprehensible instinct; they are nobody's friends, or lovers, or rivals, or family.

_(Jasper mourns her mother and her brother and rages at her father. She holds her friends tight in arms and tentacles both, and into her flesh and soul she tattoos marks of their importance to her.)_

Lightlords are soulless, heartless, _sterile_ in mind, chasing cold and mathematical perfections. They preserve the shell of life by cutting out its meaning.

_(Entropy II can't stop caring, awkward and inexpert but passionate, and moreover he doesn't want to stop; trying in the face of all logic and caution to find peace and/or redemption for every one of his monsters, fretting endlessly over the wellbeing of his students, scrawling one defiant and bloody graffito over all the old rules and laws:_ All things may find their recompense in love. _)_

Strategists, maimed by the world, are curses upon it. They bring no good to anyone of Creation; even should they _try_ to help, their nature stymies them.

_(Miramie maintains archive and cafe as sweet warm places. If one of her Treasures is in need of help, she will provide; if they are lost and need saving, then with her Hand she will move mountains in order to see them safely home.)_

These truths are written in the heartwood of the World-Ash.

_**(And the World-Ash is ashes and dust.)** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The shackles are undone  
> The bullets quit the gun  
> The heat that's in the sun  
> Will keep us when there's none  
> The rule has been disproved  
> The stone it has been moved  
> The grave is now a groove  
> All debts are removed..."  
> —U2, 'Window in the Skies'


	18. Hugh Rosewood and Entropy II: "the king's right hand"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...it just keeps on and on...
> 
> Prompt was "too tired to sleep", original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=9648176#cmt9648176

The old Lord Entropy (may he rest in pieces) was owed Hugh Rosewood's obedience, but the man's heir has earned his loyalty; the two things are not synonymous, though there is some overlap. One of the practical differences is that _loyalty_ allows for an ogre to forcibly intervene when his lord and master is trying to make caffeine and raw miracle power do the work of sleep. _For the third day running._  
  
Entropy II squawks and flails when Hugh hoists him none-too-gently over one shoulder, but even if he weren't running on empty, he's too ridiculously scrawny and weak for that to do him any good. It's like lifting a bundle of twigs. "I wasn't _finished_ ," he protests. "The SEED project paperwork—by the _Ash_ , Hugh, _put me down!_ "  
  
"Request denied," Hugh replies, without turning a hair. "It's past midnight, and you need to go to bed for once. Sir." That last as an afterthought.  
  
(Hugh's cheating. They're both cheating, really, and Hugh knows it, and he thinks his master does too, deep down. Because Entropy II might be a ridiculous twink whose bodyweight would halve if he took off his leather jacket, but he's still a Magister of the Light and his father's son, Imperial and bloody-handed. This School and the Evil Island are his garden-dominions, and as an ogre and a teacher Hugh is a creature of both; if Entropy II was _really_ trying to get loose, there's no way he'd be able to stop him. But he _isn't_ trying, because the truth is, he _wants_ to rest. He just needs to feel pushed into it in order to square it with his sense of duty.)  
  
"But it needs to be _done_. Anyway, I'm too _tired_ to sleep," the King of Evil grumbles.  
  
Hugh can't help but snort. "And the fact that you think that makes sense is _exactly why_ you're going to bed."


	19. Chuubo: "from the right perspective"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is possible that by the time the 3 sentence ficathon ends I will have done enough of these to add up to a real fic.
> 
> Prompt was _"life's like a box of matches, sometimes the whole thing catches, and all you can do is watch it burn"_. Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=9350960&posted=1#cmt9678640
> 
> Warning for non-graphic mentions of trauma, PTSD, and the general concept of children being involved in war (and thus, inevitably, being harmed by it).

Don't think of it as Imperial miracle, though it was—think instead of a wish, fervent and tearful. _I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to kill or to see people die. I wish that things could be different, that the War could just **stop** , forever._  
  
Don't think of an Imperator full of hubris, though he was; think instead, more truthfully, of a child scarred by conflict. Crying out in horror as all children cry at cruelties and terrors that they've no way to understand, reaching out in desperation for anything that looked like it might bring the hurting to an end.  
  
Don't think of a god of dream or Spirit of an Age, though he is. Think instead of a teenage refugee, eyes older than his face and soul older than his eyes, pushing back the guilt and trauma as best he can, clutching at scraps of stability, of any joy and comfort that's going. Living in his own aftermath, one day at a time.


	20. Seizhi/Chuubo/Miramie: "and what is love but hunger?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 3-sentence ficathon brings us to TWENTY CHAPTERS.
> 
> Prompt:"I came from a dark place, if everyone I love gets killed I'll go back"
> 
> Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=9402160#cmt9402160
> 
> Warning for If You Don't Like Possessive/Protective Love (Or Polyamory) You Should Just Skip This One. There's nothing sexually graphic though. Or any implied sexual acts for that matter.
> 
> Title from A Softer Sea: https://asoftersea.tumblr.com/post/179631992246/233-aw-love-bites-how-cauuugh

The ground state of an Actual is _hungry_ —desperate for identity, for acceptance, for a place to belong—one long scream of _please someone see me, please let me in_. It could be called a madness, but it's hardly a malfunction—it's a _completely fucking reasonable_ response to the privation they suffer.  
  
It leaves a mark on you, when you're hungry like that, for any time at all. And even Seizhi's not sure how long they spent as a spine of the Bleak Academy, let alone what might have come before that. They might be as old as the world, or older; might have been crying for help since before the Ash first sprouted.  
  
Things are better, now. They know their own face and voice and name; they are held and cherished by family and friends and partners, made welcome at the table of the world. They have _enough_ , enough reality and love to glut on, all golden and sticky-sweet as honey, and it is _almost_ enough to soothe them calm and harmless.  
  
Almost. Not quite. Because they can't forget; the scar of fear will always be with them. In their core they will always be on edge, waiting for what they have to be stolen from them; and the edge of them is always sharp.  
  
If what they love is threatened, they will become monstrous. They will be a kaleidoscope of terror and rage. They will be hooked and barbed and stinging. They will rip up the world if need be, to keep hold of what is theirs.  
  
(A lot of people would be put off by that sort of thing, in a romantic partner.  
  
But; "What other way is there to love?" Miramie asks, rhetorically, her smile gone soft at the corners with fondness, her arm fitted snug and possessive around their waist. "How could you say you love something if you weren't willing to fight to protect it? Wouldn't that just be the worst kind of lie?"  
  
And; "It feels _so good_ , knowing you want me so much," says Chuubo, looking at them with the most perfect trust imaginable, dark-bright eyes shining with it. "That you'll always be here, and won't let anyone hurt me. It makes me feel so warm and _safe_.")


	21. Genseric, Jenna: "writer, muse"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was "role swap", and I hit peak galaxy brain.
> 
> Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/166704.html?thread=9394736&posted=1#cmt9758768

When Jenna starts telling one of her stories, there's no way of telling how it's going to turn out. Half the time it'll be philosophical and deep, full of hidden truths, and soul-troubling in ways that human languages don't really have words to describe. Half the time it's pure absurdism filled with pop culture references. The really hard bit is trying to determine _which_ any given tale is.   
  
Genseric writes them _all_ down, just in case, even the ones about fictional bees, robot popes, and thinly-veiled expies of the Smurfs. He keeps a notebook and pen on him at all times—he can never predict when and where she'll show up, after all. He supposes that being an enemy of the world is one of those jobs with irregular working hours.  
  
(When a notebook is full, he adds it to the teetering stack beside his bed in his tiny, shitty apartment. "Possibly I should buy an actual bookshelf," he admitted to her once.  
  
She'd made a 'hmm' sort of noise, eyes as wide and guileless as voids full of falling stars could be, and opined "I'm not sure an Actual bookshelf would be a very practical idea. It would eat all the books, which would be a waste, since it wouldn't even be able to digest them. Then the next thing you knew, you and half Suzhou would be made of lined paper and covered in terrible handwriting!"  
  
It was _months_ before he figured out what _that_ had been about.)  
  
It's frustrating, often, being friends with her. And he's under no illusions that it's _safe_. The one thing she's always been perfectly clear about is that she's...what she is. She's out to destroy the universe, and he's got no idea why she's taking time out from that to tell one random human _any_ of her stories and secrets. (No solid idea, at least; just worrying intimations, the sort that nag at him sometimes in the pit of the night.)  
  
But, even with all that...here they both are. It might be the smarter option, but he finds he doesn't _want_ to break off their friendship. And while he knows most of the Nobiliser community would point to that as a sign of Excrucian influence on him...  
  
...really, he's pretty sure that the reason he's still here isn't because of any kind of void-magic-brainwashing.  
  
Really, he's pretty sure that the reason he can't be really scared of her is less to do with her than _him_. With how he can never stop trying to figure things out, never quit wanting to know _more_.  
  
"So, this is a _rough_ one," Jenna says, toying with a glass of wine she won't drink under a sky cacophonous with fireworks, and Genseric does what he suspects he'll always do; he picks up his pen, and prepares to listen.


	22. Miramie: "the sin of existing as one's own self"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 3-sentence ficathon is on post 2, and the prompt is "relief". Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.html?thread=9984576#cmt9984576
> 
> Internalised guilt and shame ahoy, folks.

  
The hidden room is safe. The hidden room is _hers_. The hidden room is where she can release the tension and let the glamour fall away, where she doesn't have to conceal her eyes or her thoughts. The endless needling torment of the world's wrongness cuts out, and every time it's like the opposite of a punch to the gut; realising all over again that _oh, it's possible to **not** be in pain._  
  
That's one of the reasons she tries not to stay there very long.  
  
There are other things to consider, of course—loneliness, duty, boredom—but they sit alongside the knowledge that's as inescapable as her Curse; the reason living in the world pains her is that she is anathema to it. She's a monster, by deed and nature both. And what right do monsters have to be _comfortable?_


	23. Seizhi(/Chuubo): "to hear your own voice and know it's yours"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've needed to write this for a long time.
> 
> Prompt was "transitions", original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.html?thread=9864512#cmt9864512
> 
> Warning for dysphoria, and for emotional and physical self-harm.

When they were little, in that time that might or might not have existed, living in their own skin was easy. Their body shifted as it needed to, whether that meant growing their hair into curls to match their best friend's or matching their colouring to the sandy lake-bottom when they played with an octopus. Everything was sweet and simple, and all that was asked of them was to love.  
  
Then they realised what they were, then they _remembered_ , and remembering where they'd come from meant remembering that they were _wrong_. Broken. Incomplete. Unreal. Parody of humanity. A pathetic empty shell that cried at night because it knew how fucking _unworthy_ it was. Something whose only hope was to pretend very hard to be normal and wish in its ugly heart that the pretending would come true.  
  
(It never did.)  
  
They clamped down hard, then. A real person's body would be immutable and fixed. Would only alter in _allowed_ ways, aging and growing and hitting puberty—and if that puberty made them cry even more, well, at least that was normal. Plenty of humans had dysphoria. It was a mark of their humanity that those people dealt with it _honestly_ , with concealing clothes or medicines or surgeries or just _putting up with it_ , instead of cheating in ways no real person could.  
  
And for years they endured like that, avoiding mirrors and closing their eyes in the shower, drawing blood when they yanked out tufts of hair like they could remove all the sickness of their nature with them. They chased an impossible goal, and self-harm became something to relish. Perhaps they would have gone on like that for years more, followed that path quietly to a grave. Except—  
  
—the summer they were fifteen was the summer of the glass dragon.  
  
Adventures started then. New friendships started then. _Stories_ started then, and in all the chaos of it they figured out a better story. One that did not necessitate torture. Kinder, and more true.  
  
_("I don't love some guy who you **might** be, someday, if you beat yourself up enough. I love **you**.  
  
"You're my best friend. I don't want anyone else.  
  
"It's always been you.")_  
  
So after it's all over, after it's done, they stand in their room before a mirror, naked and awkward, wanting to flinch from their reflection. But they swallow down the lump in their throat, place shaking hands on chest and belly, and tell their body _"Become more like me. Be what I am. Be me and mine."_  
  
And just like that, it's so easy—so _natural_ , to be fluid and shift and then settle into something _right_.  
  
The person in the mirror isn't male or female. They could pass for human, maybe, though only if they were _trying_ to pass, only if you didn't know the tells. They're not _beautiful_ in the way the world prizes.  
  
But they're smiling, and kind of crying, and they're _them_. Not a hopeless aspiration, not an alien monstrosity, not a failed human. Only themself, known and valued. A being that doesn't need to be normal to be loved.  
  
(It feels like setting down a burden they'd thought they'd carry forever.  
  
It feels like coming home.)


	24. Rinley, Natalia: "no sense of an appropriate narrative"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was "That lesbian stereotype: the Ice themed blonde" and sometimes you just gotta be stupid.
> 
> Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.html?thread=10157888#cmt10157888

  
"I'm just saying," repeats Rinley for the eleventh time.  
  
"No," says Natalia flatly, not looking up from her homework.  
  
"It would be _thematic!_ "  
  
"I refuse to bleach my hair for the sake of a trope, Rinley."  
  
"...What about for the sake of a trope _and_ ten coins?"  
  
 _"No."_


	25. Natalia, Jasper: "you and I will walk into the emptiness"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was "And if my choice is to sit graciously in my best robes and accept the inevitable or to bail a sea with a bucket, give me the bucket."
> 
> Original here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.html?thread=10444096#cmt10444096
> 
> Title is from 'One Foot' by Walk The Moon.

"But you can't fight him," Jasper protests, confused and dull-eyed, tear tracks smeared through Wicked Mode eyeshadow. "He's Death, you can't—it doesn't _work._ "  
  
"Imprecise," Natalia corrects her, raising an eyebrow. "What you mean is, 'you can't _win_ against him'."  
  
This rouses Jasper from the dead-eyed dullness, at least. "That's the same _thing_!" she wails, tears beginning to start again. "Why bother fighting if you haven't any hope of winning? You'll just end up like Mom did, like _Leo_ did—" and here she chokes back a sob, hugging herself with all her arms at once.  
  
She is the Sun which is Hope, after all. Hope is _conditional_. Hope is based on looking forward and being able to perceive something other than darkness ahead. Or _imagine_ something, when perception fails. But even imagination has limits.  
  
Natalia is not sure she can explain to Hope's goddess how it can be possible to survive hope's absence. It is not a thing she can map out mathematically. It is to do with her bones. It is to do with the ice in her heart. It is to do with a terrible animal stubbornness. It is a knowledge like how her eyes know to turn wavelengths to images, how her blood knows to clot and scab over a wound. It is something she knows because she has _done_ it, over and over, sometimes almost against her own will; this is the truth of Natalia Koutolika. _She carries on._  
  
She will fight the Headmaster not because she believes she can win, but to make a point. Certainly he will have her and Jasper and all their friends, no matter what they do. That is the simple fact of him. He is all endings. He is inevitable. He has owned them all since before they were born.  
  
Natalia does not argue that claim. She just intends to make the man _work_ to prove it.  
  
No, she has neither words nor _time_ to truly explain this to Jasper. But she can try to outline it, maybe, in broad strokes. "If there is no hope," she begins, carefully, "if doom is certain no matter what, then there is no reason _not_ to fight. Surrender will not save us, so we shall not surrender."  
  
She pauses, taking in Jasper's furrowing brow, the confused-yet-thoughtful note her sniffling has taken on. Attempts again. "There is a thing we are taught, in Russia, where I grew up—all children learn it. If you are caught in a snowstorm, it is _best_ to get indoors and build a fire, but if you cannot do that—if you are so lost and far from home that there is no shelter you can possibly reach—you must dig yourself into the snow, instead. People have survived that way, before..."  
  
Jasper bites her lip. Admits, voice uncertain and small, "I'm—I'm not from Russia. I don't know _how_."  
  
And it's true, she's bright and lush like a hothouse flower, vivid colours and soft palms, a creature of warm sunlit skies, but—her knuckles are tough and scarred, her teeth are sharp, her outline sturdy-thick with strong muscle and insulating fat. She is not _weak_ , is Jasper Irinka. She doubts herself, she is unpracticed, but she is not weak.  
  
 _(And Wicked Mode reverses her; it does not render her_ powerless _. She is of the Bleak Academy as well as of her mother's realm.)_  
  
Natalia holds out a hand to her. "I will show you how to start," she tells the other girl, ice to fire.  
  
Jasper does not hesitate further before taking it, and her grip is strong. She does not wipe away her eyeshadow, but she begins slowly to smile, and it is vicious and fey and very beautiful. "Together, then...my dad's not going to know what hit him."


	26. Heaven and Angels: "the right of the potter over the clay"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was "kintsugi", here: https://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org/168256.html?thread=10058560&posted=1#cmt10562368
> 
> I _really_ do not like the Song of Heaven.

Since shortly after the technique of kintsugi was first invented, people have bought plain new bowls and plates and cups so that they can be _deliberately_ broken and repaired with gold.  
  
Heaven and its Angels are like that. They'll shatter you. They'll put a hole in you and fill it up with radiance. They'll empty you and grow flowers in your shell.  
  
It won't matter to them that you wanted to stay yourself and whole. You're more beautiful to them with your wounds spilling light. And beauty is _everything_ , to Heaven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?"  
> —Romans 9:20-21, ESV Bible.


End file.
